Israeli Soldiers Bid Gaza Farewell

September 12, 2005|By Scott Wilson The Washington Post

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — With thousands of homes demolished but two dozen synagogues still standing, the last Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip began moving out Sunday evening after a flag-lowering ceremony marking the official end of Israel's 38-year presence and the start of the Palestinians' most ambitious attempt at self rule.

The withdrawal of six remaining Israeli army battalions, comprising 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers, was scheduled to be completed by the time Gaza awoke this morning. In short, somber speeches, Israeli officers paid tribute to the soldiers and Jewish settlers who died here since Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 Middle East War, and expressed hope their departure would improve relations with the Palestinians who must now govern the remote strip plagued by poverty and an array of militias.

"The military rule that began with the Six-Day War ends today," Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of Israel's Southern Command, told the small crowd assembled at the army's headquarters in the strip. "I hope that the departure of our forces from the Gaza Strip symbolizes the beginning of a period of tranquility."

The twilight event near what was once the largest of 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza concluded an operation that in less than month evacuated 8,500 settlers, razed communities of whitewashed homes and the military installations that guarded them, and fanned a broad debate inside Israel over the future of the Jewish state.

While dissolving the military government in Gaza, the Israeli cabinet also voted 14-2 Sunday to leave the strip without demolishing synagogues inside settlement areas that have otherwise been reduced to rubble.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government prevailed before Israel's highest court in a case challenging its right to destroy the synagogues. Religious leaders argued the structures should not be destroyed by Jews. Sharon, who pushed disengagement over strong objections from the core of his Likud party, voted with the majority.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the decision was designed "to poke us in the eye" and places Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the difficult position of either protecting what many Palestinians describe as symbols of the occupation or demolishing religiously symbolic buildings. "If we destroy them ourselves we will be doomed and if they are desecrated we are doomed," Erekat said. Israeli soldiers fixed signs onto the synagogues, cleared of their Torah scrolls, reading "Holy Place" in Arabic and English.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are expected to flood the former settlement lands, comprising roughly 20 percent of Gaza's territory, in the coming days.